The North and South Jupiter
14.09.2016

A wide, looping orbit brought Juno close to Jupiter on August 27. As the spacecraft swung around the giant planet's poles JunoCam acquired these premier direct polar views, a change from the usual nearly equatorial perspective of outbound spacecraft and the telescopes of planet Earth.

The Shape of the Southern Crab
24.04.2019

The symmetric, multi-legged appearance of the Southern Crab Nebula is certainly distinctive. About 7,000 light-years distant toward the southern sky constellation Centaurus, its glowing nested hourglass shapes are produced by the remarkable symbiotic binary star system at its center.

Green Flashes: Sun, Moon, Venus, Mercury
30.05.2020

Follow a sunset on a clear day against a distant horizon and you might glimpse green just as the Sun disappears from view. The green flash is caused by refraction of light rays traveling to the eye over a long path through the atmosphere.

Messier 20 and 21
6.08.2020

The beautiful Trifid Nebula, also known as Messier 20, is easy to find with a small telescope in the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. About 5,000 light-years away, the colorful study in cosmic contrasts shares this well-composed, nearly 1 degree wide field with open star cluster Messier 21 (right).

Webb s Southern Ring Nebula
14.07.2022

Cataloged as NGC 3132 the Southern Ring Nebula is a planetary nebula, the death shroud of a dying sun-like star some 2,500 light-years from Earth. Composed of gas and dust the stunning cosmic landscape is nearly half a light-year in diameter, explored in unprecedented detail by the James Webb Space Telescope.

Messier 24: Sagittarius Star Cloud
18.07.2024

Unlike most entries in Charles Messier's famous catalog of deep sky objects, M24 is not a bright galaxy, star cluster, or nebula. It's a gap in nearby, obscuring interstellar dust clouds that allows a view of the distant stars in the Sagittarius spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy.

APOD: 2024 September 15 Б Find the Man in the Moon
15.09.2024

Have you ever seen the Man in the Moon? This common question plays on the ability of humans to see pareidolia -- imagining familiar icons where they don't actually exist. The textured surface...

M55: Globular Star Cluster
22.09.2000

The fifty-fifth entry in Charles Messier's catalog, M55 is a large and lovely globular cluster of around 100,000 stars. Only 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius, M55 appears to earth-bound observers to be nearly 2/3 the size of the full moon.

Gemini North Images Bow Shock Near Galactic Center
17.10.2000

What's going on near the center of our Galaxy? Glowing across the electromagnetic spectrum, the center of our Milky Way Galaxy is thought to be home to massive stars, rotating gas rings, and a massive black hole. Now the central Galactic zoo just got larger.

Coronal Rain, Solar Storm
15.11.2000

In this picture, the Sun's surface is quite dark. A frame from a movie recorded on November 9th by the orbiting TRACE telescope, it shows coronal loops lofted over a solar active region.